On the Journey of Getting Sold

How about starting mediocre with OKRs and move up from there to a stronger space to prevent the worst from happening? It is important to understand that the process of learning OKRs is a never-ending one for both individuals in an organization and management.

In this episode, Jenny speaks with Dennis Graf, the business strategy manager at Kolibri Games, a mobile games company acquired by Ubisoft. It is one of the leaders of the idle games’ genre and one of their most popular games. Dennis explains that at Kolibri Games they believe in the people and adjusting their products to suit what they want, the best for their players’ experience, always learning, and offering trading value.

Listen in to learn why you’re likely to succeed with OKRs if you focus on the goals themselves and not the technical aspect of them. You will also learn how OKRs support showcasing each individual’s impact on the success of the business.

“If you’re spending on your goals themselves instead of the technical aspect then you’ll end up with much better goals in the end.” — Dennis Gräf (29:15)

Show notes

• (1:01) Intro
• (2:31) Dennis explains how things are working out during the COVID-19 pandemic and the anticipated future business challenges
• (4:00) He explains what is Kolibri Games and what they do plus the projects he started that are centered at finding the right business strategy
• (7:17) How they deal with the success of their work at Kolibri Games and the importance of having challenges to keep the team on their toes
• (8:36) Dennis explains why Kolibri Games hasn’t changed much even after Ubisoft acquisition since they’re still on their own
• (10:05) The four core values that Kolibri Games works towards making it a better business
• (11:37) How they learned about OKRs and the findings of the research they did
• (13:36) How OKRs have helped them showcase everyone’s contribution and impact on the success of the company
• (15:26) The three specific questions that management asked employees and how they started mediocrely and are moving up from there rather than starting very strong
• (18:45) What ‘cascading’ means at Kolibri Games- the connection of what they’re doing in departments and its impact in the company
• (23:40) The step-by-step never-ending process of learning OKRs for individuals and the organization
• (26:18) How they will be improving their alignment to make it more clear, plus other processes in the future
• (27:25) The challenge of data collection after introducing OKRs in an organization and how to concentrate on the actual goals and not the technical aspect of it
• (30:24) Learning to define your organization’s OKRs and overall goals and what you hope to achieve
• (33:04) Dennis advises young people to go step by step as they improve on one thing rather than experimenting on twenty things at the same time

Relevant links

• Kolibri Games website